LGF: Who's doing the talking?

One of the most frequent responses we receive from LGF fans, angry that their beloved website is described as racist or hypocritical, is that there is a big difference between what the posters on the comments page say and what Charles Johnson thinks. If a few people on the comments board say outrageous things, the line goes, then that shouldn't reflect badly on Charles because most people on LGF don't have such extreme views and "Charles didn't say it himself".

There is one big problem with this argument, namely that CJ frequently makes use of his moderator powers to censor views he doesn't agree with. If he did not at least tolerate expressions of racial hatred against Muslims, or calls for genocide, then he would remove the offending posts. The only conclusion we can draw from this is that Charles tacitly supports these views.

It is interesting, therefore, to see the great lizard himself make a fuss about two articles which appeared in Britain's Guardian newspaper, and which he identifies with the paper itself, rather than their respective authors. The first was a satirical column by Charlie Brooker deploring the Bush presidency which ended with the line "John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr - where are you now that we need you?". Anyone with an iota of sense would realise that this was a satirical piece, but obviously in times of heated political debate such as these that's too much to expect. Little surprise then that Charles headlined a post 'Guardian Calls for Bush to Be Assassinated' (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=13269).

Not quite, Charles. CHARLIE BROOKER wrote the article, and it was satirical. Clearly the Guardian has editorial responsibility for the the content of its pages, and this is made clear by the clarification that was printed in the Guardian TWICE as a result of outraged lizardoids & Co flooding the Grauniad's email inboxes. Can we expect Charles to take the same responsibility for items posted on LGF?

The second post, while drawing fewer angry responses from LGFers, displays the same ignorance of how newspapers work and even of how to read them. Under the headline 'Guardian Lunacy in Full Flower', Charlie-boy writes:

Britain’s Guardian newspaper says William Shakespeare was probably a Muslim. (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=13276)

Ehm, no, Charles. The article didn't say 'Shakespeare was probably a Muslim'. It said that "HIS WORK resembles the teachings of the Islamic Sufi sect" and that "the playwright was a member of a religious or spiritual order which can BEST BE COMPARED TO the philosophy of Sufism". Also, it may have been printed in the Guardian, but it was Dr Martin Lings, a 96-year old scholar who made this claim, not the paper itself. But that has never stopped Charles from brewing up another foul broth of anti-Muslim, anti-Leftist sentiment and hurl it at his slobbering readers...